


Break, Break, Break

by starsonfire



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cancer Arc, Cuddling on the beach, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Mulder is a sad moose, UST, Words Unsaid, it's all in the action, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-12 23:12:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5684842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsonfire/pseuds/starsonfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder finds Scully with her toes in the surf. Perhaps if he holds her long enough, love will drive her sickness away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break, Break, Break

**Author's Note:**

> A one-shot response to leiascully's xf writing challenge, prompt: oceans. None of the characters are mine, and the title comes from Tennyson's poem of the same name. 
> 
> Timeline: Season 4, post-Elegy but pre-Gethsemane

 

_ Break, break, break, _

_         On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! _

_ And I would that my tongue could utter _

_         The thoughts that arise in me. _

 

Mulder gave a brief nod to the policeman climbing back into the driver’s seat of his squad car, its shiny white finish gleaming golden in the last rays of the day’s sun. The engine started with a sputter, and its tires spun for a moment against the grainy, slippery sand covering the asphalt road that ran alongside the beach. Slouching away from the cherry glow of the tail lights, Mulder turned to face the Atlantic, the salty breeze pushing his already-mussed hair back from his face.

His scan of the beach for a glint of copper and a dark, small form was second nature at this point; his eyes had already began darting up and down the sand before his brain had issued the command. He spotted her, to his mild disbelief, firmly planted on the sand, her sensible heels and blazer cast to one side, her knees drawn toward her chest as the tide lapped at her bare feet. She seemed to have given into some uncharacteristic whim, which would have delighted him under any other circumstances - just not the ones that they were currently under at this point in time. He loped across the sand, his last few steps slipping into a shuffle.

“Scully, what are you doing? That water has to be freezing, you’ll catch your-” Mulder sucked in a breath. Terrible choice of words. He dug the heel of a hand into one of his eyes, pressing until he saw a star or two. 

Scully tilted her head far enough back so that she could stare up into his downturned face. Her mouth twisted wryly. “It’s okay, Mulder. A little cold water isn’t going to kill me.” She reached a hand back to brush his knee in reassurance, her head tilting back down, as if gravity, too, drew her gaze in like the foaming tide. 

Mulder looked down at her hunched shoulders, her thin, freckled arms clasped around her bent knees, and followed his heart down, sinking to a spot in the sand that was half behind her, half beside her.

“You know, when I was little, Dad brought us here one weekend. He said when it came to a relationship with the sea, everyone ought to ‘start it up young.’ We all got into a competition to build the best sand castle, to impress him.”

“I bet you won,” Mulder murmured, crossing his legs and leaning his elbows on his knees.

“Of course I did,” she replied, a jesting pride in her voice. “It had a working moat complete with some  _ very  _ defensive hermit crabs. I was the star kid that day, up until I got stung in the back of the knee by a jellyfish. Bill wouldn’t even pee on it for me, the bastard.” 

A salty gust buffeted past them, tossing Scully’s hair into her eyes and sending a shiver up her spine, ending in a shudder at the base of her neck. Frowning, Mulder leaned forward, wrapping an arm across her collarbone and tugging her back until she leaned against his chest. The looseness in her limbs made him remember how tired she often got at the end of long cases like this lately.

“Scully,” he began, dropping his prickly chin to her shoulder, ready to tell her again that she shouldn’t be out here. He reached his free hand up to tuck a strand of windblown hair back behind her ear. His eyes flickered to the water, and a sloping movement, followed by a splash, made him start, his arm briefly tightening across Scully’s sternum.

“Did you see that?”

“Mulder, I’m not falling for that again.”

“No, Scully, there was something out there. You didn’t hear the splash?” He pointed to a spot just a little further than the first breaking waves. 

“It was probably just a fish.”

“It could’ve been a shark, though, don’t you think? Or maybe a whale.”

“Mulder,” she turned her face toward his, her breath fanning his chin. He could almost hear her right brow arching. “Whales don’t tread water that shallow.”

“Spoilsport.”

“Honestly, I'm surprised that you didn't bypass the whale idea and just go straight for-” she cut off sharply, her pale face contracting into a wince. Her hand flew up to the arm he had draped across her, grasping it as a sort of anchor as shooting pain sparked between her eyes. 

“Scully?” The sharpness in Mulder’s gravelly voice grated on even his own ears. Swallowing, he made an effort to soften his tone. “Scully? Is it another headache?”

Scully nodded once, a sharp downward jerk of her chin. Her eyes were still closed as she turned her face more toward him, pressing her surprisingly warm forehead against his cool cheek. 

“Ah, Scully,” Mulder half-whispered, his fingers splaying against her neck as he rubbed the length of his thumb back and forth over her jawline. 

“It'll pass,” she muttered. Her lips brushed against the side of his neck as she spoke. 

One heartbeat. Two. Five. Her grip loosened on his arm, but her hand did not fall. 

“You know, Mulder,” she spoke up suddenly, softly, her voice a low, humming contrast to the scattered, dull roar of the waves. “Most days, I really envy my father.”

“Why would you do that, Scully?” He pulled his face back from hers to glance over at her downcast eyes. Only a centimeter or two of salty air stopped the tips of their noses from brushing. 

Her fingers absently kneaded the sinews of his tanned forearm. Her tongue darted out to moisten her top lip, and she turned her gaze the the darkening dusk that had settled over the sea. “His death. Perhaps a panicked moment of pain, and then unconsciousness. And then nothing. A swift end. No sick days spent in hospitals. No lingering, no waiting uncertainly for your last breath, no knowing that it would come soon, but never knowing exactly when.”

Mulder held his breath, not trusting himself to speak. They often skirted so deftly around the topic of Scully’s illness; nothing more than his offers to pick her up from treatments, his brief inquiries into her test results, her disappearing from time to time in search of a ladies’ room to staunch the flow of blood from her nose. He refused to let himself consider the word “terminal” when it came to her cancer; it arose under special circumstances, and he was certain that such special circumstances meant there had to be a special cure as well.

He was also certain that he - that they - were running out of time. 

His hand dropped from her face to cover the small fingers she had clutched against his arm. “Scully.” Her name tumbled from his lips not as a question, not as a plea, but as a statement. A reverential affirmation of an intimacy that arose from their mutual use of last names - no titles, no christian names accompanying - but names reserved only for each other’s voices.

“We’re going to figure this out.” He twisted his fingers, interlocking them with hers. Did the bones in her hand always feels this fragile? Were the veins in them always so blue? “I believe that there is an answer to this, and I believe that we’re going to find it.”

Scully bit her lip, hard, trying to keep her chin from wobbling, as she knew it was wont to do when tears were fighting their way to spill onto her cheeks. She ducked her head to shield her profile from view, knowing he’d seen enough of her tears in the past few months to last them a lifetime. His blind belief in truths he’d never found, truths that had only ever taken from him and done nothing to give him peace, made her throat burn and her chest ache. What was this man, to believe something that had only sought to hurt him would be his - now their - saving grace? Scully thought back to the test results she’d received two days ago, the ones she’d told no one about. Metastasis into the bloodstream. 

Weeks to live.

Not even his infuriating, beautiful, starry-eyed idealism could save her now. 

“You can’t give up yet,” she heard his voice come closer to her ear, closing the already small distance between them, his lips seeking a whispery purchase against her cheek. It was his warm, hushed bedroom voice that he only used when she knew he was worried about her. 

He’d been using it more than usual lately. Some days it made her want to scream. 

Most days, it made her love him even more.

It was so unfair. 

Scully realized Mulder was waiting for some sign of affirmation from her. She knew what he wanted - reassurance, a promise that she would keep fighting the good fight. She could also see that he was afraid to ask it of her.

Sure for the moment that she would not cry, she tilted her chin, lifting her eyes to his face. He was much closer than she’d realized; their noses briefly bumped together, and she could pick out individual strands of color in his fathomless eyes - forest and moss green, amber and chestnut brown. A few specks glinted gold in the dying light that streaked their faces. 

Scully swallowed, her eyes drifting down to the bow of his mouth. It was surrounded by the stubbly shadow that always crept up his face after a long day, and she suddenly yearned to feel the scratch of it against the inside of her palm. 

She was dying, Scully thought to herself. Why should she deny herself such small pleasures any longer?

She slowly untangled her fingers from his, her hand drifting up to settle over the prickly growth along the side of his face, the stubble chafing at her palm just like she’d imagined. 

Mulder leaned into her touch, his eyes sliding shut. As much as he longed for this, as much as he lived from moment to moment like these, his heart gave an ominous lurch. Scully was only like this when she was scared, or sad, or giving up. He didn’t want it this way. They couldn’t both be this way. One of them was always strong when the other needed to be weak. 

He didn’t know how to go on when they both crippled by the same things. 

“Mulder.” Her whisper was almost lost in the waves. He was only sure she had spoken because he felt her breath dance across his own lips. He opened his eyes with dreamlike slowness. Her thumb traced a lazy circle across the top of his cheek, and he leaned down, closing his eyes again as he pressed his forehead to hers.

This way, he couldn’t see the water welling in her eyes. He couldn’t see the first, lone tear trickling down past her nose. He knew she wouldn’t want him to see. 

She couldn’t speak, but he somehow felt the tightness in her chest, in her throat. He felt it in his own.

“I know,” he murmured, answering her silence, a silence threatening to collapse under its own terrible weight. “I know.”

A split second of a high, rushing roar was the only warning they got.

The cold, briny wave smacked into them with all the gentle consideration of a brick wall, causing them both to instantly freeze, their shoulders drawn into a hunch, their eyes shut as water streamed from their hair and down their faces. 

“Oh my god,” Scully chattered, the first of them to come to. “Oh my god, that’s cold.” She shifted away from him on the now damp sand, reaching down to wring what water she could out of her navy sweater set. 

Mulder shook his head like a dog, sprinkling her with wayward droplets. Squinting one eye at her, the beginnings of a chuckle rumbled in his chest.

“Scully, you’ve got…” instead of finishing his sentence, he extended an arm to pluck a tangle of seaweed from the top of her hair. Her eyes narrowed at him as he tossed it aside. 

Mulder noticed Scully’s hands shaking as she reached up to wring out a lock of her hair, and he sobered instantly.

“Scully, let’s head back. The car has a pretty nice heater in it, you know.”

“Music to my ears,” she answered dryly, reaching for her previously discarded and now drenched blazer and heels. 

They stumbled across the uneven sand in semi-darkness, the sun now gone from the horizon. 

“I could go for a coffee or three right about now,” Mulder piped up, his hands shoved fruitlessly in his wet pockets for warmth. “What do you say, Scully?”

“I could go for a bath in coffee, personally,” she answered with an emphatic shiver. “Though I can’t see how-”

Scully’s voice cut off abruptly, accompanied by a muted thud. An exasperated grunt issued from somewhere near his feet.

“Scully?”

“Godforsaken driftwood,” she grumbled, pushing herself off the sand. “It was too dark to see.”

Mulder almost laughed. “Happens to the best of us, Scully.” His mouth crooked into a half smile, he bent down, scooping one arm under her knees and the other around her back. Heaving her up against his chest, he continued their trek back to the car.

“Mulder,” Scully spoke up in a warning tone, her face stony.

“Scully,” he replied, imitating her tone with exacting precision.

“This is unnecessary. I can walk just fine.”

“I know, Scully, but do you really want to? It’s freezing.” His open hand rubbed back and forth between her shoulder blades, trying to chafe some warmth back into her small frame.

He could almost hear her replying frown, but she said nothing more. They walked on in silence for a minute or two. His rocking footsteps lulled her into a calm, her weariness making her forget to be angry. Her mind sluggishly drifted back to the two of them before the wave had hit, and her heart gave a dull pang in her ribcage. She crooked an elbow around his neck and leaned her head against his chest. His steady, insistent heartbeat pulsed rhythmically against her cheek, promising health and life and strength. 

Right now, it would have to be enough for the both of them. 


End file.
